Born in 1543 (some sources say 1548) as a younger brother of Oda Nobunaga. In February 1568, by Nobunaga's order, he was adopted into the Nagano clan (also called Kudo), a powerful local house of northern Ise, and succeeded to its headship as lord of Nagano Castle. The following October, when the Kitabatake house submitted to Nobunaga, Nobukane was appointed lord of Ise Anotsu (present-day Tsu) and moved his base to Ueno Castle. At the 1581 Kyoto Horse Parade he led ten mounted men, ranking effectively third after the heir Nobutada, and the Nobunaga Koki chronicle consistently places him between Nobukatsu and Nobutaka, suggesting he held a notably high standing within the Oda clan. After the Honnoji Incident in 1582 he served Hideyoshi, styled 'Tsu Jiju,' and held 150,000 koku at Ise Tsu. During the 1590 Odawara campaign he angered Hideyoshi by pleading for the lives of the Hojo, and in September 1594 he was stripped of his domain. He was later pardoned and, in 1598, granted 36,000 koku at Kashiwabara in Tanba. He died vomiting blood in Osaka Castle on July 17, 1614, at the age of 72.

A figure trusted highly by his brother Nobunaga and evidently valued within the Oda clan, as shown by his rank at the Kyoto Horse Parade. He retained a certain standing as 'Tsu Jiju' under the Toyotomi regime, but at times showed a compassionate streak — such as pleading for the life of his enemy, the Hojo, during the Odawara campaign — which angered Hideyoshi and led to his dispossession. That he was not ruined afterward, retaining his family's standing as lord of Kashiwabara, suggests a resilient political savvy.

The castles of Nagano and Ueno (Anotsu), where Nobukane served as lord, both survive today as historic sites illustrating the Oda clan's pacification of northern Ise. Nagano Castle in particular was abandoned when the domain seat moved to Ueno Castle in the late 1560s, making its ruins historically significant as a marker of the transition from medieval local-lord rule to early-modern daimyo rule. The Kashiwabara domain in Tanba continued under Nobukane's descendants, preserving the family name through the early modern era.